Structural reforms boost opportunities for global development

BEIJING— China will build on the forward momentum already established and continue its economic structural reforms throughout 2017, in an effort to provide more opportunities for global growth.

Deepening supply-side structural reforms, aimed at mid and long-term stable growth, will remain at the center, according to this year’s Government Work Report, which sets the GDP growth target for 2017 at around 6.5 percent.

China’s supply-side reforms began in 2016. Among the efforts planned for this year will be the expansion of capacity reduction from the coal and steel industries to sectors including coal-fired power, building materials and nonferrous metal, the National Development and Reform Commission said onMarch 6.

The Government Work Report urges a decisive market role and an improved government role in resources distribution, to secure progress the area.

“Aiming to resolve bottlenecks blocking mid and longterm growth, the supply-side reforms are timely and necessary for a sustainable growth in China,” said Selcuk Colakoglu, head of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Ankara-based International Strategic Research Organization.

“The resulting economic upgrading will bring more opportunities to the global growth,” said former Indonesian vice-foreign ministerDino Patti Djalal.

Changes are expected to be directly and imminently felt in future prices on world markets, especially in bulk commodities, as China is the world’s second largest economy and its biggest coal consumer and steel producer.

China’s supply-side reforms last year, as an example, were seen to have contributed to an aluminum price hike.

“The reform brings all of us in in the industry to a healthier situation, whenwesee the new levels of prices,” Vladislav Soloviev, CEO of the world’s leading aluminum producer RUSAL of Russia, told Xinhua during the World Economic Forum in January in Davos, Switzerland.

Soloviev attributed the price rise to an expanding demand in allmarkets especiallyChina, and was confident about the positive future impact of China’s reforms.

“The market is growing, economic reform is happening, there are a lot of infrastructural reforms ... that’s why we are quite optimistic about the demand of the future. Also about joint ventures with Chinese companies,” he said.

It is China’s priority to transform and upgrade the real economy in order to release potentials for a sustainable growth. The government work report demands innovation take the lead, whichis expected to see new concepts, management Vladislay Soloviev, modes and technologies.

“Problems in the real economy have their roots in a lack of innovation,” said Zhou Guohui, a deputy to the 12th National People’s Congress and head of the provincial science and technology department of Zhejiang province in east China.

He said he believed innovation highlighted developing new and high-tech industries, so as to open up more growth spaces, as well as transforming traditional industries with the information technology.

The reforms were challenging for such a developing economy asChina, as it was turning into a leading first-class digital economy and the world’s manufacturing powerhouse, Joe Kaeser, president and CEO of German giant Siemens said.

Apart from new technologies, innovation involved labor force retraining, he said, noting thatGermans would like to share the experience of a smooth transition they went through in 1950s and 1960s.

“We are very eager to bring modern manufacturing software to Chinese manufacturing so they are more efficient, high quality and high scale,” the Siemens CEO added.

The world expects to see a successful economic upgrading in China, because it is vital to China’s growth, and in turn to global growth amid uncertainties largely from a sluggish global economic recovery and a surge in anti-globalization and protectionism in Western countries.

“The planned growth level will help keep China’s contribution to the global growth at around 30 percent and this will help avert an economic depression worldwide,” said Mihail Delyagin, director of the Russian Institute for Globalization Problems.

The Government Work Report also holds environmental protection as a key factor in China’s economic upgrading, to meet people’s urgent

Online

See more by scanning the code. demand for better environment, especially cleaner air.

Moreover, this serves as a driving force, NPC deputy Zhou said.

He said that for example, economic mode changes entailed cutbacks in coal consumption while working to improve energy efficiency.

Official data showed a continuous fall in coal use in the past three years in China, where energy use had 6.7 percent growth last year.

China plans this year to close down, halt and delay coal-fired power capacity of at least 50 million kw in total, while quitting coal production capacity in excess of 150 million tons. In a larger sense, this means China will contribute moreto the global fight against climate change.

Macharia Munene, a Nairobi-based foreign relations scholar, praised the latest Chinese move to meet environmental challenges.

The reform brings all of us in the industry to a healthier situation.” RUSAL of Russia CEO of China’s estimated contribution to global growth given the country’s growth target is set at about 6.5% for this year